One might think only an academic could come up with something this stupid -- but it's actually an improvement.

The Telegraph's Louise Gray reports, "Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions."

Gray further reports: (emphasis added)

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less 'carbon intensive' goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.

Prof Anderson admitted it "would not be easy" to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods.

He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last "time of crisis" in the 1930s and 40s.

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

At first glance, Professor Anderson's advocacy of zero economic growth in order to 'save the planet' might seem quite insane.

But this proposal actually constitutes an improvement in Professor Johnson's thinking, as National Review's Chris Horner notes that in September 2009 the Tyndall Centre was advocating "a planned recession" in order to save the planet from climate change.

From negative-growth advocacy to zero-growth advocacy in just 14 short months!

So we have that going for us, which is nice... Gunga galunga ... gunga, gunga-lagunga.

175 years ago today in 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens -- better known as Mark Twain -- was born in Florida, MO.

Also on this date, 110 years ago in 1900, Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46.

November 30 ...

In 1667 satirist, essayist, and poet Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1782 the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. In 1803 Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States. In 1804 the Jeffersonian Republican-controlled US House served Federalist-partisan US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase with six articles of impeachment. (Two more articles were later added; Chase was later acquitted by the Jeffersonian Republican-controlled Senate. He is the only Supreme Court Justice in US history to be impeached.) In 1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens -- better known as Mark Twain -- was born in Florida, MO. In 1874 author, statesman, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. In 1900 Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46. In 1939 Soviet troops invaded Finland. In 1962 U Thant of Burma was elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, succeeding the late Dag Hammarskjold. In 1966 the former British colony of Barbados became independent. In 1981 the US and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe. In 1988 buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. took over RJR Nabisco Inc. with a bid of just over $24.5 billion. In 1999 anti-globalization protesters in Seattle, WA, forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies for the WTO meeting in that city.

Jonathan Gurwitz:

Instead of only looking for weapons and bombs, our security screening process should also be looking for the people who are likely to carry them. That means profiling -- a no-no for some of the same people now complaining about virtual strip searches. Not racial or religious profiling. Criminal, behavioral profiling.

Israel has more to fear from terrorism than any nation. But travelers who go through Ben Gurion International Airport don't automatically face a choice between body scans or pat-downs, as they do at many airports in the United States. They are subjected to profiling. All of them.

For the vast majority of travelers, even Arab and Muslim ones, that means a handful of questions. But if you're an American Christian who happens to travel to Pakistan, you'll get the third degree.

That's an inconvenience for some people who have legitimate personal or business reasons to travel to dangerous parts of the world. But instead of just giving the appearance of security, it actually makes air travel safer. And it spares everyone else from the time, cost and indignity of the implausible suspicion of posing an equal threat of terrorism.

Jay Ambrose:

Here's a phrase that ought to constantly inform the thinking of makers of public policy -- unintended consequences. They are almost inevitable when a favored few figure they can manage the particulars of the lives of millions better than the millions themselves can.

I usually grant the good intentions of the activists forever having at us with their ambitious programs, but for reasons of hubris, imprudence and inadequate appreciation of freedom in the economy and in individual conduct, their techniques are too often not up to their intentions.

20 years ago on this date in 1990, the United Nations Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

November 29 ...

In1777 San Jose, CA, was founded as el Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe. It was the first civilian settlement in Alta California. In 1781 the slave ship Zong dumped 133 sick slaves into the sea in order to claim insurance. British Courts disallowed the claim, but no one was charged with the slaves' murders. The incident is credited with starting off the abolition movement. In 1832 novelist Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, PA (now part of Philadelphia). In 1864 a Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. In 1890 the US Naval Academy defeated the US Military Academy 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game, played in West Point, NY. In 1898 author C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1924 Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera "Turandot." (It was finished by Franco Alfano.) In 1929 Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. In 1947 the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. In 1952 President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess the ongoing conflict. In 1961 "Enos" the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning. In 1963 President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1964 the US Roman Catholic Church instituted sweeping changes in the liturgy, including the use of English instead of Latin. In 1967 US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced his resignation; he became president of the World Bank. In 1981 actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, CA, at age 43. In 1986 actor Cary Grant died in Davenport, IA, at age 82. In 1990 the United Nations Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991. In 2001 former Beatle George Harrison died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer; he was 58.

George Will:

Concern for children's sensibilities is admirable. The coarsening of the culture is a fact with many causes, but its consequences are unclear. And it can bring out a Puritan streak in progressivism.

The lawyer for the video-game industry warned the Supreme Court that "the land is awash" with contemporary versions of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), the crusader for censorship of indecency, as he spaciously defined it. "Today's crusaders," the lawyer said, "come less from the pulpit than from university social science departments, but their goals and tactics remain the same."

Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives' agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise - an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism's itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon - the Pecksniffian progressive.

November 28 ...

In 1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait that now bears his name. In 1919 American-born Lady Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament. In 1925 the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville's famed home of country music, made its radio debut on station WSM. In 1942 nearly 500 people died in a fire that destroyed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. In 1943 President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II. In 1958 the African nation of Chad became an autonomous republic within the French community. In 1964 the United States launched the space probe Mariner IV on a course to Mars. In 1975 President Ford nominated Federal Judge John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by William O. Douglas. In 1979 an Air New Zealand DC-10 en route to the South Pole crashed into a mountain in Antarctica, killing all 257 people aboard. In 1985 the Irish Senate approved the Anglo-Irish accord concerning Northern Ireland. In 1990 Margaret Thatcher formally resigned as prime minister of Britain during an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, who conferred the premiership on John Major.

Margaret Wente, in the Globe and Mail: (emphasis added)

[The lack of results of last year's climate-change talks in] Copenhagen was not a political breakdown. It was an intellectual breakdown so astonishing that future generations will marvel at our blind credulity. Copenhagen was a classic case of the emperor with no clothes.
...

The biggest loser is the environmental movement. For years, its activists neglected almost everything but climate change. They behaved as if they'd cornered the market on wisdom, truth and certainty, and they demonized anyone who dared to disagree. They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media, who parroted their claims like Sunday-school children reciting Scripture. No interest group in modern times has been so free from skepticism, scrutiny or simple accountability as the environmental establishment.
...

Before they were sucked into the giant vortex of global warming, environmentalists did useful things.
...

"How high a price must the world pay for green folly?" asked the thinker Walter Russell Mead. "How many years will be lost, how much credibility forfeited, how much money wasted before we have an environmental movement that has the intellectual rigour, political wisdom and mature, sober judgment needed to address the great issues we face?"

The answer is too high, too many and too much. Please grow up, people. You have important work to do.

A commenter to the piece named "Jester" underscores Wente's overall point with this argument:

Maybe if pundits like Wente didn't provide a forum and support for right wing nutjobs to spread lies about climate change the environmental movement wouldn't have to spend so much oxygen on it.

In other words, if you dare question my thesis, you are a 'nutjob' whose skepticism about the validity of my argument makes me defend the proposition, thereby wasting my time.

Nice job, "Jester."

100 years ago on this date in 1910, New York City's Pennsylvania Station opened.

November 27 ...

In 1901 the US Army War College was established in Washington, DC. In 1910 New York City's Pennsylvania Station opened. In 1942 the French navy at Toulon scuttled its ships and submarines to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. In 1945 Gen. George C. Marshall was named special US envoy to China to try to end hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1953 playwright Eugene O'Neill died in Boston at age 65. In 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. In 1970 Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest. In 1971 the Soviet Union's unmanned Mars 2 landed on Mars. In 1973 the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who'd resigned. In 1978 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. In 1983 183 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Madrid's Barajas airport. In 1985 the British House of Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord, giving Dublin a consultative role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland. In 1989 107 people were killed when a bomb blamed by police on drug traffickers destroyed a Colombian jetliner. In 1990 the British Conservative Party chose John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 1992 for the second time in a year, military forces tried to overthow president Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela. In 1999 the New Zealand Labour Party's Helen Clark became the first elected female Prime Minster in the country's history. In 2001 the Hubble Space Telescope detected a hydrogen atmosphere on the extrasolar planet Osiris, the first first time an atmosphere was detected on an extrasolar planet.

Michael Barone adds some levity to analysis of the 2010 midterms:

As go the Finns, so goes America.

Read the whole piece for his more complete analysis.

A commenter called "pilsenboy" left the following response to a Michael Barone piece (link above) at Real Clear Politics in answer to another commenter who criticized his earlier assertion that the 2010 election was only about the economy:

I usually don't engage in personal attacks, but guys like you and almost all southerners are a good example of what a mistake it was for the Union to win the civil war. If we had just let you people go your 0wn way, we would have had all the benefits of industrialization and you would have been in peonage to the Southern slave holders, one small step above the slaves. They would have let you think that you were free, and you would be happy that there was at least one group in the world that you could feel superior to. The Republican party is picking up the mantle of turning the working class into a class of serfs and letting you rant about freedom from socialists,. etc. while they tighten your economic shackles. You will wake up in about ten to fifteen years when there will be no unions, no representative democracy, nobody to protect you from your economic masters, and wonder how did I get into this situation. When you want to react, your masters will know you as well as Pavlov's dog, and to distract you from wanting to get your fair share of the pie they will scream ABORTION, or GAY MARRIAGE, or a FLAG BURNING, or any midless tripe that you would fall for. Unfortunately, you are dragging the rest of the country into servitude to corporate interests with you. The South will rise again, and the inbred mouthbreathers that inhabit it will destroy a once flourishing liberal democracy and turn it into a medieval cesspool. Congratulations.

60 years ago on this date in 1950, China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the US, and South Korea.